Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Flickr Finds

Today I searched on Flickr for pictures taken recently in Leelanau County, MI. I was surprised to see how many photographers block the sharing of their pictures. Do they not want people to see their photographs? Odd.

6 comments:

I'm not surprised. Photographers and writers do that work for a living. Yes, we want our work to be seen, but that does not mean that we wish to have other people use it for their own purposes for free! So here we have seven images that you copied from Flickr without giving credit to the photographer (except for Ken Scott, who embedded his copyright in his image), without linking to the photographer's site--how is this not outright theft of someone else's work?

Think of Flickr as a public museum. You may go there anytime and view wonderful art for free. That does not mean that you can walk out with it.

From the Flickr FAQs: Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.Flickr makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to other web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr. This provides a way to get more information about the content and the photographer.

I apologize. There is, in fact, a link from the image to the original Flickr photo, and the photographers did provide a means of embedding. I withdraw the accusation of outright theft.

I still feel that it's more courteous, when making authorized use of another person's work, to give that person credit in a caption or in the body of your post. And I still think that the way the photos was used is an example of why photographers block the sharing of their pictures.

OK. I've been doing this for years and never has someone come back to me and said, "Hey, put my name on that." Usually, people appreciate a link back that will drive traffic to their photos which is why those photos are put on Flickr in the first place.

Now, if this was a for profit website it would be different. For example, a guitar manufacturer asked me if they could use one of my pics I took of one of their clients at a concert. The picture did not link back to my Flickr page but they gave me credit.